Vologda's Lace Tale
From 23 to 25 June 2011 in Vologde The first International Festival of Lace "Vita Lace", which means "Live Lace". The venue was not chosen by chance. Our city has long been one of the universally recognized world centers of lacemaking. The first lace was made of silver and gold threads, starting from the XVII century. The clothes of the reigning persons, boyars and representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, were decorated with openwork finishes made by Vologda masters. And today the result of their labor, painstaking, demanding perseverance and attention is admirable.
Since 1959, the company "Snowflake" has been operating, which replaced lace artels. Professional lacemakers work here.
On November 3, 2010, the National Lace Museum opened in Vologda, which is the first lace museum in Russia.
The tasks of "Vita Lace": to increase the prestige of the art of lacemaking, to revive and ensure the further development of folk art craft, to popularize this native Russian type of folk art. That is why many interesting events were organized within the framework of the festival: exhibitions of competitive works of participants of the festival "Labyrinth of Lace", children's artistic creativity "Lace Tale of Vologda" and photo works "Lace City of Vologda".
The city hosted guests from 22 Russian regions, as well as from Slovenia, Croatia, France, Ukraine, Slovakia, Ireland, Canada, Poland. In the Vologda Governor's College of Folk Crafts (an educational institution that prepares personnel for fishing) visited another guest of the festival - the wife of the President of Russia Svetlana Medvedev. She sat down for a pillow with whooping coughs and with the help of teachers mastered the simplest element of lacemaking - braid, concluding that the craft is very difficult.
In addition, the first lady of the country witnessed the record set by local craftsmen. On the central square of Vologda, representatives of the Book of Records of Russia recorded for posterity the most massive master class in lacemaking. 570 lacemakers from Russia and several foreign countries simultaneously demonstrated their skills in the open air. However, due to the presence of S.Medvedeva, the residents of Vologda, alas, could not become full-fledged spectators, and watched a unique master class at a distance.
Another important point of the festival is the annual All-Russian competition of masters of lacemaking “Silver Pertussis”, held previously as part of the exhibition “Russian Flax”. As usual, teachers, professionals and children competed.
A real celebration for everyone! And everyone can be in a lace fairy tale at any time, visiting the ancient Russian city of Vologda.
Photo from the website /firstlady.kremlin.ru